No sport demands and celebrates the suffering of its participants like road racing, yet the pursuit of cycling was formed out of a spirit of emancipation, freedom, invention and revolution. It started with Victorian adventurers who took their new machine across continents, up unscaled peaks and into the first races, followed by those who saw the potential of the bicycle as a radical mode of transport, before the twentieth-century sun shone on a golden age of cycling, bringing fame and fortune to its glamorous new sporting superstars.

Through fifty key riders, from early pioneers like Mark Twain to modern superstars like Eddy Merckx, Break Away is a fascinating and arresting new history of road cycling.